Heart of the Rockies Christian Church in Fort Collins, CO

“Keeping House,” Rev. Jeff Wright, 11/30/14

Loading...

https://heartoftherockies.org/wp-content/uploads/_file_mp3/718308-20998fd1.mp3

Keeping House
A sermon preached by Jeff Wright

at Heart of the Rockies Christian Church
(Disciples of Christ)
Fort Collins, Colorado
November 30, 2014
First Sunday of Advent

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that
you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
—The Apostle Paul

Texts: 1 Corinthians 1:3-9 & Mark 13:3-8, 24-37

Before I read from the Gospel According to Mark, I want to point to one of its peculiarities – the way Mark ends his Gospel. We talked about this in our recent Sunday school class on Mark. If you have your Bible – or take a pew Bible – turn to the sixteenth chapter of Mark. You see the footnote reference at the end of verse eight (NRSV)? Let’s read it at the bottom of the page.

Some of the most ancient authorities [the most reliable of the earliest manuscripts] bring the book to a close at the end of verse 8. One authority concludes the book with the shorter ending; others include the shorter ending and then continue with verses 9-20. In most authorities verses 9-20 follow immediately after verse 8, though in some authorities the passage is marked as being doubtful.

Why all the alternate endings? Scholars suggest a lot of reasons. I go for the simplest, that the early church didn’t like Mark’s ending. Mark emphasizes Jesus’ death on the cross. He mentions the resurrection only in passing. He ends abruptly by describing frightened women fleeing an empty tomb, saying nothing to anyone. You can understand why, early on, the faithful wanted to add a better ending. Imagine if Mark’s Gospel – without the additions – were the only account we had of Jesus’ life. How do you think we’d respond when we arrived at this cryptic ending? We’d say, “Did we miss something?”

This had to be the question on the lips of those for whom Mark wrote his Gospel. Following the resurrection, there’d been a lot of talk about Jesus’ immediate return. But years later, now, Mark is writing to a church that is at least one, maybe two generations removed from the life and ministry of Jesus. Persecution has broken out. Jerusalem is under the siege of Emperor Titus and the Roman army. Some have abandoned the faith. Others, because of their faith, have been abandoned by their families. A confused and despondent church is asking, “Did we miss something?”

It’s as if Mark intentionally left an incomplete conclusion to his Gospel so that, unsatisfied, readers might turn back to see what we missed. According to many scholars, what we missed is chapter thirteen. Only we didn’t exactly miss it. It’s more like we dismissed it. We didn’t like it the first time around: Jesus’ talk of the destruction of the Temple and wars and rumors of wars and earthquakes and famines and persecution and brother and sister and father and mother betraying one another and a desolation so horrible you don’t want to be there when it happens; some misleading others in falsely claiming to have an inside track on just exactly when and how history as we know it will come to an end. We raced through that section. Because we wanted to get on to the good stuff: Jesus’ resurrection and the promise of a time beyond all wars and suffering and loss.

But Mark insists that we go back and read chapter 13, this conversation that Jesus had with Peter, James, John and Andrew when, just before his crucifixion, they got Jesus off to the side and asked him privately, “What’s next? What are we to expect?”
(Read Mark 13:3-8; 24-37.)

We can read this section and not find a shred of Good News. It can actually sound like a threat. Because we 21st century Christians, white folks, citizens of the American Empire, can think we’re doing pretty well, have nothing to worry about. But imagine a persecuted and beleaguered church, as it was in first-century Palestine, as it is now in many parts of the world. Maybe you read that Pope Francis has said that persecution against Christians is stronger today than in the first centuries of the church. Were you here when Raad, father of the Iraqi family – the Altaees – we’re helping to resettle, when he spoke about his Christian friends in Iraq, and how they and others are fleeing for their lives, many with nowhere to go? A lot of our brothers and sisters around the world, when they read this passage, they find comfort and strength, knowing that God knows of their suffering, that God promises to sustain them in their suffering, that God encourages them to keep faith, keep hope, assuring them that the housekeeper will return.

Listen, if we’re honest, discerning, we’ll see that this conversation addresses the uncertainty and depression that characterize Western culture, signs of which are nearly overwhelming: lack of trust in our leaders; an ever-deepening fragmentation in which each individual or group becomes the measure of what is right and wrong; confusion about basic values; our embrace of simplistic solutions to complex problems; our having been seduced by the lie that by way of more and more material possessions you and I can insulate ourselves and our families from the world’s troubles; the tendency in the church to cocoon ourselves in our little circles of fellowship to avoid the rigors of ministry in a world of great need and opportunity. In many ways, we’re a people who act as if we have no future. Or worse, that the end is one of tumult and catastrophe: acts of terrorism; economic collapse on a global scale; epidemics of plague-like proportion; ecological destruction; wars and rumors of war. You hear it in the church as well as from the world.

But this is not Jesus’ picture of the end. Jesus spoke of the kingdom to come as a time of great joy and celebration. He likened the kingdom to a joyful family reunion, a wedding party, a great feast. The Bible pictures a marvelous ingathering of humanity’s diversity and the material wealth and cultural splendor of all the nations. In the meantime, though, Jesus tells his disciples to anticipate troubles and suffering, natural disaster, political upheaval, apostasy and heresy. In its brokenness, the world is a difficult place. Jesus uses the language of apocalypse – the sun darkening, stars falling from heaven – to describe the chaos. But we don’t need the hyperbole of apocalyptic language – we don’t have to turn to the news – to see the betrayal. We experience it in our own families. We know it in our own hearts. Forces of darkness, the broken powers and principalities – call them whatever you like – they’re real and from every direction they close in upon all that is beautiful and true and holy. But they will not have the last word.

God will.

In the meantime, Jesus tells his disciples – and the rest of us – don’t get caught up in the despair of the world or in fruitless attempts to calculate the time of his return; and don’t jump on apocalyptic bandwagons that lead you away from ministry to a hurting world – for the love and healing of which Jesus will give his life; for the love and healing of which Jesus invites us to give our lives. God’s kingdom is coming on earth as it is in heaven. The gates of hell shall not prevail. “But about that day and hour,” Jesus says, “neither the angels in heaven nor the son of man knows, but only the Father. Until then,” he says, “keep watch. Keep faith. Keep house.”

What?! Amid wars and rumors of war, earthquake, famine and persecution, in the face of the world’s indifference and resignation, and in the midst of our own doubts, hurts, troubles and unfulfilled longings, Jesus calls us – to be good housekeepers?
In a time of social disorientation and spiritual rootlessness, people are longing for a place to call home: a place of essential values and unconditional acceptance; a place of hope in the midst of the world’s and despair; a safe place; a place to release, recoup and reevaluate. I used to think it was the church’s first business to change the culture, to transform the world. I still do. Only now, the work doesn’t sound as grandiose or seemingly impossible. Jesus suggests here that it’s simply a matter of keeping house, seeing what needs to be done around the place and dividing up the chores until the householder returns.

I know we’re tempted to think there must be more important work to do. Then I think of Mary and Joseph – Mary, pregnant and about to have her first; Joseph, responsible for the care and safety of Mary and the newborn – and the home in Nazareth in which they will raise Jesus.

When Janet and I are in Nazareth, our tour groups have stayed at the convent of an order of German nuns, the Sisters of Nazareth. Their convent is located just across the street from the Basilica of the Annunciation. When they bought the land in the late 1800s, they were told that village tradition held it was the burial place of a righteous man. But there was no sign of it on the grounds, no evidence in any written documents. As they commenced construction on the convent’s first building, one of the nuns fell through the earth into an open space of ancient ruins. Sister Stephania takes us down four flights of stairs, to where archeological digs uncovered what many believe was an ancient church and the burial site of one most likely a bishop. Next to it, the remains of what many believe was a first-century domestic dwelling. Taken together – the church built right next to a first-century home – some have surmised that it may have been the home where Jesus was raised. Everywhere we go on our tours, pilgrims get used to hearing, “This is the presumed site of whatever.” Because archeologists can’t be certain about first-century realities.

But it’s fun to imagine… what if we’re standing inside the house in which Jesus was raised? What if this is where his mother told him the stories of Scripture, taught him to trust God, where he and his friends played together and, just across a portico the workshop where he learned his earthly father’s trade?

What if you and I thought of this place, our church building, as an extension of that home? It’s what we do together, isn’t it, offering a place of hospitality in an often inhospitable world, nurturing one another and putting out a welcome mat for the curious, the broken and discouraged? Ours is a place of refuge and redemption, where members of the family – each with our own work to do – live lives of faith, hope and love, keeping house, anticipating the owner’s return.

There are other callings in life, but none more holy and transforming than our keeping house for God. It’s one of the surest signs that, in a broken world, you and I put our hope in God and live our lives in Christ.

— Jeff Wright
serda14